[mdevour]

When I bought vBulletin last February I was depending on the fact that this hack was working and supported, which it at least seemed to be at the time.

Lierduh appears to be busy on other things and hasn't posted to this thread since March. Dave Kendall and others have written many tweaks and bug fixes, but they're not yet integrated into the distribution files, requiring each new user to review 350-plus posts to collect them all.

Thankfully, frakman in post 67 gives me some guidance on my most critical requirement, which is importing a bunch of mbox format e-mail archives to initially populate two of my six new forums.

I knew going in that I'd have to build on this code to get my board and list server to work together the way I need them to, but I had hoped to start from a working code base.

We at least need to:

• Integrate the current bug fixes
• Add the new features that a couple of people have coded
• Update and expand the installation instructions
• Update the hacker's guide (or incorporate its features as options)
• Test everything against 3.6.1 and upcoming releases

I'd also like to brainstorm if the mod ought to be upgraded to use the plug-in system, or whatever other ideas anybody has.

If any of this is going to happen either lierduh has to pick it up again or somebody else has to (assuming he agrees, of course...).

Naturally I wouldn't be talking like this if I wasn't prepared to offer myself as a candidate. The trouble with that is I'm not a coder. All my programming experience is 20 years out of date. Every time I pick up this project I have to haul myself a little further up the learning curves for vBulletin's structure, XML, modern HTML, CSS, and PHP. As far as learning curves are concerned, on a scale of one to ten -- where zero is your grandma -- I'm somewhere below two! :cross-eyed:

So, can a guy who's working hard just reading this stuff take what others produce, integrate it, organize it and release it? Project leader as glorified filing clerk? Is that even vaguely realistic?

Is there enough interest here to build a serious collaboration around?

Maybe even enough interest to finance some development work?

What say ye?

I know some of you will think this is a wonderful idea, since you want the hack working again as much as I do, but I'm especially interested in the advice of experienced coders and developers. If I'm hopelessly out of my depth you'll know it, and it'd be better to figure that out now...

Thanks for reading.

Mike Devour